Ward boundaries: A clear lack of interest

Maybe it doesn’t really make any difference how the city’s ward boundaries are adjusted. After all, the total number of people who registered an opinion during three formal consultation sessions, eight drop-in opportunities, an on-line survey, telephone calls and email was ... 117.

That’s right. More than 81,000 people live in the city’s five wards. Just shy of 58,000 were eligible to vote in the last municipal election. More than 28,000 did vote. But only 117 cared enough about ward boundaries to speak out, literally or metaphorically.

When that’s the total response to a threemonth process that was heavily promoted by City Hall and well covered by the local media it’s hard to get worked up about the result. But still. Three options were presented during the process, A, B and C. Charts laid out current voter numbers, projected numbers, ease of identifying the wards and other factors.

After all that attempted consultation city council on Monday night chose Option D.

That’s right. A new boundary configuration was cobbled together at the last minute and that one will stick. But hey, who really cares anyway? If the new Option D were the best plan we wouldn’t care either.

But it’s not. The best plan was Option B, as we said back in July, because it did the best job of meeting the two most important criteria.

1. It would have provided the most equal number of voters per ward 10 years from now and beyond. This is not a process that should be repeated often.

2. With only a few changes to existing wards it created the cleanest boundaries. People could look at a map and recognize their wards as mostly squared-off zones with either a major arterial street or the Otonabee River as dividing lines.

In the end city staff recommended Option A. They did so largely because six people said they didn’t want a section of the traditional “south end” to shift from Otonabee Ward to Town Ward and another handful felt Monaghan Ward had more in common with Town Ward.

That’s maybe a dozen people, tops, out of 58,000 eligible voters.

Consultation is important but when so few take up the opportunity their opinions should not carry so much weight.

Doing so flies in the face of the number one reason for changing boundaries: to even out ward populations so all voters have an equal voice during elections and equal representation in the council chamber.